ABSTRACT
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) remains one of the most difficult political forces in the modern world to categorize and understand. There are three ways to try to come to grips with what the CCP is. The first is to look at its historical background, its evolution from its foundation in 1921, and the key challenges that it has faced in the last nine decades of its existence. The second, which is closely linked to the first, is to look at how, through its ideology and the articulation of its political programme, it has justified itself, and explained what it has done. The third is to look at the practical ways in which it is organized, how it elects and appoints leaders, and conducts its own business. Running alongside these are Party structures at national and local level—and the reach into every institution, and even into non-state actors, acting as a kind of 'framework' or environment.
